In June, Tatianna Salisbury, an NIU alum, released her self-published debut book, ‘words my heart needed to hear,’ a collection of poems and short stories.
Salisbury has drawn on her own life experiences to create a 154-page book that explores different forms of love, relationships and heartbreak. Salisbury has been writing since a young age and started writing professionally when she was 18.
“The whole idea of chronicling every thought and feeling I had was something I really liked to do ever since I could hold a pen,” Salisbury said. “Writing a book before 30 was always the goal and being a published author has always been the dream.”
Salisbury started writing her book in January of 2022, going through the process of looking back on her old journals and finding inspiration from the words of her past self.
“I knew that I wanted to write vulnerable pieces and I knew I wanted to write about love in a way that I had not yet read other authors writing about,” Salisbury said. “I’ve had some experiences in my life and throughout my young adult years that I thought would make really good poetry and short stories but I didn’t know how I wanted to structure it.”
Salisbury’s writing process started from the rawest emotions she could find. She believes her best writing starts from the darkest place because that is a place many people are afraid to go.
“That’s what I wanted to start this book from – a place of, like, the things people don’t want to admit, the things I didn’t want to admit, and how I dug myself out of those trenches,” Salisbury said.
The book contains five chapters that go through a cycle of bad relationships. She wanted to be someone others could find comfort in.
“I wanted to write a poetry book that a 17 or 18-year-old in the same situation I was in could pick up and say ‘There’s nothing wrong with me, I’m not alone, I’m gonna get through this and I’m gonna figure out how,’” Salisbury said. “That was a big motivation to it; it was not only my own closure but what other people could find in this writing.”
Salisbury felt that the hard part of writing “words my heart needed to hear” was knowing her family and friends would read it.
“The most challenging part was knowing that the people closest to me would get this really in-depth glimpse into real heartbreak and real pain that I’ve felt. Something I had to get over with publishing this was how are they gonna judge me and that’s something you have to think about,” Salisbury said.
Salisbury wants young people to know that learning how to love themselves and love other people will bring about human mistakes. This can be a lonely experience, but Salisbury hopes people realize that they are not alone.
“If nobody else talks about where we fall short then how do we learn and how do we expect to be a complete role model for others?” Salisbury said.
“Words my heart needed to hear” can be bought on Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Walmart.
